Chapter Text
“So you don’t know what’s going on?”
“Not really.” Chris stepped past a person marching down the hallway in the opposite direction, just barely avoiding a collision course. He cursed softly.
“What was that?”
“Sorry, not to you, Jill.” Chris sighed into his phone, “lots of traffic today, apparently.”
“Busy times at headquarters?”
“Always is.”
Jill was not at headquarters currently- she was somewhere remote that Chris wasn’t allowed to know, for whatever reason, while going through rehab from the mind fuckery that Wesker had put her through.
She didn’t give him too many details of what that entailed, exactly, but it seemed to be doing her good so far, so he could endure being left in the dark for her sake. Figured she wanted as much privacy as she could get.
“Listen, I’m nearly there, so-”
“Yeah.” Jill made a humming noise that crackled over the phone connection. “Tell me about it later?”
“If it won’t get me in trouble, sure.”
“Really no idea what it’s about, then?”
“Nope.”
“That never means anything good.”
“Sure doesn’t- alright. I got to go. Call you later?”
“Counting on it.”
Chris hung up, pocketed his mobile, and entered the meeting room.
It was empty.
He frowned.
He wasn’t that early- usually there were at least a few other people lingering about in the ten minutes leading up to the actual scheduled time.
With nothing to do, and no one to talk with, Chris surveyed his surroundings; Medium sized conference room, a long table in the middle of the floor with plenty of chairs, and a projector screen at the far end. He sat down at a random seat and hoped there were no secret claimed spots he didn’t know about.
And then he waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Jesus Christ, did something happen to them?
Chris felt a little ridiculous, sitting all alone in an empty room like this. It made the air all oppressive and uncomfortable. He shifted in his seat, pretending not to feel the creeping apprehension trying to poke at his gut.
The door opened.
Finally.
He watched with some relief as a brown haired woman entered the conference room- just the one, he noted immediately. That made them a company of two. She looked harried and stressed, her face a picture of exhaustion. In one hand she held a shitty paper cup - presumably coffee - and in the other a slim laptop with a binder pressed against it.
“Hello.” Chris said.
She barely even looked at him, just rounded the table to sit opposite him, and placed her things on the table. She immediately began to fiddle with a bunch of wires Chris hadn’t noticed, connecting her laptop to the projector screen. She muttered irritably under her breath as she struggled with it, until, finally, her screen showed across the room. A file manager was already open, with a series of files with codenames Chris didn’t recognise.
“Alright.” She clapped her hands together, and looked up at him. “Chris Redfield?”
“That’s right.” Chris said, not sure if he should be annoyed or not. He’d been pretty specifically requested to come here- shouldn’t she know who he was? But then the social conventions behind the BSAA had never been his strong suit. He was an attack dog, more than anything else. Didn’t often get involved with the behind the scenes stuff. He got his orders, gave his own orders, and that was usually the extent of his managerial career.
“I’m Director Hill.” She said primly. She did not offer a hand to shake. “It’s a pleasure to meet.” Didn’t sound like she meant it.
“Sure.” Chris said, holding on to politeness for dear life. “You too, uh, Director Hill.”
“I’m from Theoretical Defense.” She explained swiftly.
From what now?
“Theoretical?” Chris asked.
“We’re relatively new. Not everyone knows about us- we work, well, in theoretical terms usually. Hands off, generally.”
“I see.” Chris said, not seeing anything at all. What in the world was going on? Why was he here? What did she want with him? Patience, he scolded himself. It didn’t stop his uneasy confusion from blooming further.
“I understand that-” she looked briefly into her binder, “two months ago, you killed the B.O.W known as Doctor Albert Wesker?”
“Affirmative.”
“I see.” She frowned. Then she opened one of the files on her laptop. It was a video file; security footage. It showed the inside of one of their top security cells, and inside was-
“What the fuck?” Chris hissed in surprise, for there was a child sitting on the metal bed inside the cell. Instinctive anger surged inside him. “Why the fuck do we have a child in custody?”
“That is not a child.” Said Director Hill simply. “That is the B.O.W known as Doctor Albert Wesker, presumed to have been killed by you.”
“What?” The shock was enough to make the anger recede, but only slightly. “You’re kidding. That can’t be right- I saw him melt in front of me. No one could have survived that.”
“Albert Wesker did.”
“And last I checked he wasn’t a god damn ten year old.”
He looked from the video of the child - young, blonde, kicking his feet dully where they hung from the edge of the bed. He was dressed in nothing but a hastily fitted prison jumpsuit. - to Director Hill, who met his gaze impassively.
She clicked out of the video and opened a series of images instead, this time of an infant.
“This child was found near the last known sighting of Wesker.” She explained. “At first, we didn’t know what to make of it. We sent it to a foster family- and then,” she opened a new series of images, showing a toddler, “this happened.”
Chris didn’t get a chance to ask what she meant before she carried on,
“He went from a newborn infant to a toddler- around three we believe, overnight.”
“You mean…” he trailed off, and she continued as though he hadn’t said a word.
“A month after that, a week ago from now, it turned into the child in the video. Our best theory is that this is the Uroboros Virus’s attempt at regenerating him back to health. Whatever cellmatter left behind that didn’t get incinerated in the volcano slowly trying to evolve back into Wesker as he was before dying.”
Chris didn’t know what to say. It just couldn’t be true. Ten years had he spent hunting for Wesker, antagonised and angry and betrayed, and finally he thought he’d closed that chapter of his life for good. How long could his life revolve around the same man? How long could Chris keep going like this?
And besides- it just didn’t make sense. Wesker? An infant? A toddler? A child? He’d never even considered the possibility. Why should he? Why should anyone have suspected him to have this one last ace up his sleeve? Though he probably hadn’t known himself that the virus would go to these extreme lengths to keep him alive.
Could he even die at all?
Feeling vaguely nauseous, Chris asked; “And you’re sure it's him?”
“Without a doubt. We’ve done countless DNA tests. He has a specialised strain of the T-Virus, and the Uroboros-virus, inside of him. They’re mostly dormant, and he seems to display only ordinary human behaviours and abilities for the time being.”
“Other than the rapid aging.”
“Other than that, yes. Furthermore, he doesn’t seem to retain any memories at all. Well-” she took a sip from her coffee, grimaced, “god this stuff is awful. Anyway, as I was saying, he retains no memories from his life before his presumed death. And, even more fascinating, he retains no memory from stage to stage. What he experienced as a toddler he can’t recall as a child. Not even a hint of psychological after effects.”
“So he has no memories at all?”
“No, that’s the even more complicated part. He seems to have all the memories he had at that stage from his previous life. So, from his perspective, he went to bed as he did when he was an actual ten year old, and woke up here.”
“Jesus.”
Chris couldn’t imagine how confusing that would be for a child. How utterly terrifying.
This is Albert Wesker. He reminded himself firmly. Don’t feel bad for him.
But it’s also a child for fucks sake. He hasn’t done anything wrong yet, has he?
The ethics at play made Chris’s head thrum with a budding headache.
“Why didn’t I know about this?” He asked, falling back on frustrated anger again. “Why now?”
“You didn’t need to know, not until we had more of the facts.” Director Hill said sharply. “And now- now we do need you to know, because we need your help.”
“How?” Oh god, they didn’t want him to….
“There’s been… complaints, from other departments, about what we’re doing. They seem to think that it’s not, ah, ethical to keep him like this. My idea was to get rid of him to start with, but, again, there’s been complaints.”
Chris could understand why. Hadn’t he himself already felt the strain of the moral dilemma at hand? At the end of the day, though, he just couldn’t imagine choosing to kill a child. It was just… wrong. Director Hill, however, seemed to operate under another kind of worldview, clearly to her frustration.
“So,” she said, taking a deep breath, “he needs a handler. Someone who can watch him, keep him… alive, and step in if he becomes dangerous. We’re not sure how long it will take for his next growth spurt, so to speak. We don’t know how his memories will progress- we need someone who can keep up with him, if worst comes to worst, which I imagine it will. You are the only person we know who has been able to defeat Wesker, if not kill.”
Ah.
Well- that made sense, he supposed. But still-
“You want me to take care of a child?”
You want me to take care of Albert Wesker?
“If I had my will you wouldn’t have to.” She said bitterly. “So yes, I want you to take care of a highly dangerous and potentially unpredictable B.O.W masquerading as a child, and kill it if need be. At the very least return it to its original near death state, so we can find better measures next time.”
“And if I say no?” He had to ask. This was insane.
“Then we find someone else.” Director Hill shrugged.
Chris glanced again at the photos. Jesus Christ, he didn’t get paid nearly enough for this. He didn’t even know how to be around children- much less the type that was actually your antagonist for the past ten years and counting. Who had killed- who had- fuck.
Chris took a moment to accept the facts laid out before him.
Wesker was truly, genuinely, alive. He had not killed him, and it might be impossible to kill him.
Furthermore, he was a fucking child. A child with no memories or understanding of his situation. A child who was probably scared shitless, newly traumatised, and confused.
And, if Chris refused, that child might end up in the hands of someone who cared about as little about ethics as Director Hill did. For all he knew, involving himself hadn’t even been her idea. She might have wanted someone else to start with, someone who shared her pragmatism.
This was a horrible idea. You shouldn’t even care. Not about this, not about him.
Say no, leave, get yourself out of this mess once and for all.
“Alright. I’ll do it.”
She looked neither happy nor surprised.
“Good.” Director Hill closed her laptop and unplugged the wires. The projector screen died. She drank the rest of her coffee in one grand swoop of the cup. “You and the B.O.W will be sent to a safehouse immediately.”
“What- right now?”
She ignored him. “You'll remain in England, probably. We want you two as close to headquarters as possible without being in headquarters. I imagine they’ll set you up in London. We have a decent apartment there with a brand new security system. Yes, that’s probably for the best. Get your things then come straight to the garage.”
“Wait-”
But she was already halfway out the door, and did not care to answer any more questions. The door closed with an ominous click after her, and then Chris was alone again.
Fuck.
Now what the hell had he gotten himself into?